We live in the throes of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 that is likely to be with us and spreading for some time to come. It is a racing certainty that the government will have to impose further restrictions upon all of us between now and Christmas in order to save lives and protect the National Health Service.
Those restrictions will only work with the goodwill, support and confidence of the public. If that confidence is eroded, if trust in government is undermined, then the necessary precautions and protections will not work.
That is why the ‘No 10 Party’ has more serious implications, even, than ‘The Barnard Castle Affair’ when the prime minister’s adviser, Dominic Cummings, broke lockdown rules to travel with his family to County Durham.
At a time when we are trying to persuade the recalcitrant to have a first, a second and a booster vaccination in their own interests and in the interests of those that they love or work alongside, the messenger needs all of the credibility that he or she can muster.
So to learn that there has, it appears, been “one law for them and another law for us” and that while the rest of the country was suffering under lockdown and the grim and sometimes fatal effects of separation there was one group of revellers making whoopee at the heart of Downing Street is crass beyond belief.
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Having spent a week denying that rules have been broken the prime minister conceded at prime minister’s questions that he had been ill-informed, apologised and instigated an inquiry to be conducted by the cabinet secretary.
We await the outcome of those investigations, which arguably should have been carried out days ago, with not too little interest. In the meantime we are now left with the task of having to sell to a highly sceptical public some unpalatable pre-Christmas messages. There is a very great deal at stake.
Sir Roger Gale is former vice chairman of the Conservative party
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